5 Must-Read Digital HR and HR Tech Articles of February 2018

Welcome back to our monthly must-reads! Here at Digital HR Tech, we’re already starting to look forward to the first days of Spring. In the meantime, we’ve put together the 5 articles we enjoyed most reading last month.

#5. 11 Best Free Tools for Recruiters that Boost Productivity

A truly digitally oriented article to kick off this month’s list. Needless to say, recruitment isn’t easy. It’s a work hard, non-stop, always-on type of job. To help recruiters excel at their job, Nick Greene presents a handpicked arsenal of productivity tools.

To structure his article, he divides the recruitment tools into 5 different categories:

Candidate Search

Time & Distraction Management

Task Management

Email

Miscellaneous Tools

Below, you’ll find a few of the tools Nick mentions.

Candidate Search

The first step in every candidate search is posting the job advert. A few tools that can be a secret weapon in your recruiter arsenal here are:

BetterTeam: BetterTeam takes the hassle out of the actual job posting process. As a recruiter, you just have to create a job description, pick the job boards you want it to appear on and… sit back.

Aevy: Aevy’s software detects what your candidate needs are through a quiz and then searches its database for anyone that might be relevant.

Time & Distraction Management

We all get distracted sometimes. As a recruiter, you work is highly performance-based though, so too much distraction could literally cost you. A time or distraction management tool can help you get just the right dose of distraction.

TomatoTimer: The TomatoTimer is a nifty online tool that does the timing for you and hence makes sure you stay on target.

SelfControl: The SelfControl app takes things a little further; it blocks out all your favorite websites, allowing you to focus on work that really matters.

Task Management

Schedule that call, email that follow-up, attend a bunch of meetings, etc. Recruiter life can be filled up with to-dos. Luckily there are tools out there to make sure you never miss another deadline.

ToDoist: Todoist is your all-in-one-to-do list dashboard that sends you the complete list of your to-dos at the start of each day.

Email

The following tools help you master cold email outreach, either by helping find people’s emails or helping you optimize your writing.

Boomerang: Boomerang allows you to schedule your emails based on when you want to send them, giving you the power to reach the right candidate at the right time.

Crystal: Crystal analyzes candidate profiles (social, emails received, etc.) and then gives you a solid idea of what their personality is like. It can even give you suggestions on how to write better emails, as per the candidate’s taste.

Nick mentions a few more tools, like Scannable, read the full article here.

#4. How You Can Use Instagram for Recruiting

As a seasoned marketer and business builder in the HR and Recruiting industry, Maren Hogan knows what she’s talking about when it comes to using social media for recruiting.

In her article, Maren zooms in on how to use Instagram as a real-life employer branding and recruitment tool. She lists a few practical tips to help you make it work:

#3. 3 Tips to Digitally Engage Your Workforce

We’re sticking with the digitally focused articles in our February wrap-up. In this one, HR Bartender Sharlyn Lauby writes about how she listened to Gregg Gordon speak about strategies to engage your workforce digitally.

During his session at the KronosWorks Conference, the latter shared three strategies that organizations should use to digitally engage employees.

Automate – If technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning allow companies to give the boring stuff to a computer, that leaves the employees with exciting and interesting work that can effectively engage.

Augment – For employees to perform at a high level, organizations should augment existing processes and workflows. Both organizations and individuals need to realize that, with new technologies, we will have to change the way we do things.

Amplify – Companies need to support employee learning and enable their staff to test-drive new technologies and see how they could possibly make work better for everyone.

When it comes to amplification, Sharlyn notes that we need to be an effective adopter of new technologies. It’s about letting people explore and be curious, not about randomly abandoning structure.

Sharlyn ends her article by saying that the way to build engagement is by letting technology do what it does best because that will allow your workforce to do the same.

#2. Text Messaging: Almost Dead or Alive and Kicking?

In this short but to the point article Tim Sackett wonders why text messaging hasn’t become the single most used way of communication in recruiting. We know that most people prefer this form of communication so why haven’t talent acquisition shops gone full text in their communication?

A good question indeed.

One reason Tim mentions is the fact that most technology just hasn’t caught up yet; texting out of the majority of ATSs is still ‘clumsy at best’ and add-on technologies that enable texting are perceived as too expensive.

But the expense of adding texting into your stack might be the largest ROI of any technology, Tim says.

Sackett continues by saying that text messaging doesn’t replace all of your communication, but that it could replace most of the emails and phone calls if used in a strategic manner.

His strategy to increase the use of text messaging for recruiters is as follows:

You need to start testing mass texting

Check-ins and updates for the top talent you have in play (instead of email messages).

Mobile engagement with your talent pools (in addition to emails).

From a data-perspective, texting also offers a lot of opportunities when it’s integrated into your ATS. While using Natural Language Processing, the applicant journey can be recorded and analyzed in detail for optimization!

#1. How to Be an Ethical Employer in the Gig Economy

An interesting article by Shauna Miller about an element of the gig economy that’s often overlooked: the relationship between employers and their independent workers.

A 2016 McKinsey report found that about 20 to 30 percent of the workforce in Europe and the United States were plugged into the gig economy. That’s about 162 million people. A number that’s most likely on the rise.

In this article, Shauna shares three ways in which companies can promote strong, ethical relationships in the gig economy.

1. Pay a Fair Wage – And Be Timely About It

The best way to retain gig workers is to pay them well. They have to pay added taxes and pay for their own benefits which justifies fully loaded rates offered by the employer.

An ethical employer will also use a transparent, structured payment schedule.The biggest way to de-risk working independently is to structure a contract that includes an upfront payment and milestone payments along the way.

2. Bring Them Into the Company Culture

If you can and your contract workers are local, invite them into the office. Just make sure that they have a well-functioning, prepared space to work when they arrive and not the broken chair…

Small gestures like birthday cards or an invite to the company holiday party can go a long way too in making your gig workers feel part of the culture.

Finally, give new additions to the team the same attention you give full-time employees when they start. If HR would have an onboarding procedure for them that would be even better.

3. Offer Them a Path for Growth

It’s important to keep in mind that gig workers do have careers. Their paths may be nontraditional (for now) but independent workers still want steady growth in their jobs. So keep an open mind about how to best leverage great independent workers.

Consider your gig workers for more challenging and higher-paying projects as you grow together, and nurture your relationships with them. Companies that don’t show their workforce allegiance or loyalty will get none in return.

Author: Neelie Verlinden

Neelie Verlinden is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Digital HR Tech. She’s an experienced digital HR & HR Tech writer, speaker, and entrepreneur with an international background. She has written countless articles on all things HR technology.